VI. Simple and Compound Labour

Herr Dühring has discovered in Marx a gross blunder in economics
that a schoolboy would blush at, a blunder which at the same time contains a
socialist heresy very dangerous to society.

Marx's theory of value is “nothing but the ordinary ...
theory that labour is the cause of all values and labour-time is their measure.
But the question of how the distinct value of so-called skilled labour is to be
conceived is left in complete obscurity. It is true that in our theory also
only the labour-time expended can be the measure of the natural cost and
therefore of the absolute value of economic things; but here the labour-time of
each individual must be considered absolutely equal, to start with, and it is
only necessary to examine where, in skilled production, the labour-time of
other persons ... for example in the tool used, is added to the separate
labour-time of the individual. Therefore the position is not, as in Herr Marx's
hazy conception, that the labour-time of one person is in itself more valuable
than that of another, because more average labour-time is condensed as it were
within it, but all labour-time is in principle and without exception—and
therefore without any need to take first an average — absolutely equal in
value; and in regard to the work done by a person, as also in regard to every
finished product, all that requires to be ascertained is how much of the
labour-time of other persons may be concealed in what appears to be only his
own labour-time. Whether it is a hand tool for production, or the hand, or even
the head itself, which could not have acquired its special characteristics and
capacity for work without the labour-time of others, is not of the slightest
importance in the strict application of the theory. In his lucubrations on
value, however, Herr Marx never rids himself of the ghost of a skilled
labour-time which lurks in the background. He was unable to effect a
thoroughgoing change here because he was hampered by the traditional mode of
thought of the educated classes, to whom it necessarily appears monstrous to
recognise the labour-time of a porter and that of an architect as of absolutely
equal value from the standpoint of economics” {D. K. G. 499-500}.

The passage in Marx which calls forth this “mightier
wrath” {501} on Herr Dühring's part is very brief. Marx is examining what
it is that determines the value of commodities and gives the answer:
the human labour embodied in them. This, he continues, “is the
expenditure of simple labour-power which, on an average, apart from any special
development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual... Skilled
labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied
simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater
quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly
being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its
value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a
definite quantity of the latter labour alone. The different proportions in
which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their
standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of
the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom”.

Marx is dealing here first of all only with the determination of the value
of commodities, i.e., of objects which, within a society composed of
private producers, are produced and exchanged against each other by these
private producers for their private account. In this passage therefore there is
no question whatever of &ldquo;absolute value&rdquo;—wherever
this may be in existence—but of the value which is current in a definite
form of society. This value, in this definite historical sense, is shown to be
created and measured by the human labour embodied in the individual
commodities, and this human labour is further shown to be the expenditure of
simple labour-power. But not all labour is a mere expenditure of simple human
labour-power; very many sorts of labour involve the use of capabilities or
knowledge acquired with the expenditure of greater or lesser effort, time and
money. Do these kinds of compound labour produce, in the same interval of time,
the same commodity values as simple labour, the expenditure of mere simple
labour-power? Obviously not. The product of one hour of compound labour is a
commodity of a higher value—perhaps double or treble — in
comparison with the product of one hour of simple labour. The values of the
products of compound labour are expressed by this comparison in definite
quantities of simple labour; but this reduction of compound labour is
established by a social process which goes on behind the backs of the
producers, by a process which at this point, in the development of the theory
of value, can only be stated but not as yet explained.

It is this simple fact, taking place daily before our eyes in present-day
capitalist society, which is here stated by Marx. This fact is so indisputable
that even Herr Dühring does not venture to dispute it either in his
Cursus or in his history of political economy ; and the Marxian
presentation is so simple and lucid that no one but Herr Dühring “is left
in complete obscurity” by it. Because of his complete obscurity he
mistakes the commodity value, which alone Marx was for the time being concerned
with investigating, for “the natural cost”, which makes the
obscurity still more complete, and even for the “absolute value”,
which so far as our knowledge goes has never before had currency in political
economy. But whatever Herr Dühring may understand by the natural cost, and
whichever of his five kinds of value may have the honour to represent absolute
value, this much at least is sure: that Marx is not discussing any of these
things, but only the value of commodities; and that in the whole section of
Capital which deals with value there is not even the slightest
indication of whether or to what extent Marx considers this theory of the value
of commodities applicable also to other forms of society.

“Therefore the position is not,” Herr Dühring
proceeds, “as in Herr Marx's hazy conception, that the labour-time of one
person is in itself more valuable than that of another, because more average
labour-time is condensed as it were within it, but all labour-time is in
principle and without exception—and therefore without any need to take
first an average — absolutely equal in value” {D. K. G. 500}.

It is fortunate for Herr Dühring that fate did not make him a
manufacturer, and thus saved him from fixing the value of his commodities on
the basis of this new rule and thereby running infallibly into the arms of
bankruptcy. But say, are we here still in the society of manufacturers? No, far
from it. With his natural cost and absolute value Herr Dühring has made us take
a leap, a veritable salto mortale, out of the present evil world of
exploiters into his own economic commune of the future, into the pure, heavenly
air of equality and justice; and so we must now, even though prematurely, take
a glance at this new world.

It is true that, according to Herr Dühring’s theory, only the
labour-time expended can measure the value of economic things even in the
economic commune; but as a matter of course the labour-time of each individual
must be considered absolutely equal to start with, all labour-time is in
principle and without exception absolutely equal in value, without any need to
take first an average. And now compare with this radical equalitarian socialism
Marx’s hazy conception that the labour-time of one person is in itself
more valuable than that of another, because more average labour-time is
condensed as it were within it—a conception which held Marx captive by
reason of the traditional mode of thought of the educated classes, to whom it
necessarily appears monstrous that the labour-time of a porter and that of an
architect should be recognised as of absolutely equal value from the standpoint
of economics!

Unfortunately Marx put a short footnote to the passage in Capital
cited above: “The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the
wages or value that the labourer gets for a given
labour-time, but of the value of the commodity in which that
labour-time is materialised.” Marx, who seems here to have had a
presentiment of the coming of his Dühring, therefore safeguards himself against
an application of his statements quoted above even to the wages which are paid
in existing society for compound labour. And if Herr Dühring, not content with
doing this all the same, presents these statements as the principles on which
Marx would like to see the distribution of the necessaries of life regulated in
society organised socialistically, he is guilty of a shameless imposture, the
like of which is only to be found in the gangster press.

But let us look a little more closely at the doctrine of equality in values.
All labour-time is entirely equal in value, the porter’s and the
architect’s. So labour-time, and therefore labour itself, has a value.
But labour is the creator of all values. It alone gives the products found in
nature value in the economic sense. Value itself is nothing else than the
expression of the socially necessary human labour materialised in an object.
Labour can therefore have no value. One might as well speak
of the value of value, or try to determine the weight, not of a heavy body, but
of heaviness itself, as speak of the value of labour, and try to determine it.
Herr Dühring dismisses people like Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier by calling
them social alchemists {D. K. G. 237}. His subtilising over the value of
labour-time, that is, of labour, shows that he ranks far beneath the real
alchemists. And now let the reader fathom Herr Dühring's brazenness in imputing
to Marx the assertion that the labour-time of one person is in itself more
valuable than that of another {500}, that labour-time, and therefore labour,
has a value—to Marx, who first demonstrated that labour can have
no value, and why it cannot!

For socialism, which wants to emancipate human labour-power from its status
of a commodity, the realisation that labour has no value and can have
none is of great importance. With this realisation all attempts —
inherited by Herr Dühring from primitive workers’ socialism —
to regulate the future distribution of the necessaries of life as a kind of
higher wages fall to the ground And from it comes the further realisation that
distribution, in so far as it is governed by purely economic considerations,
will be regulated by the interests of production, and that production is most
encouraged by a mode of distribution which allows all members of
society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum
universality. It is true that, to the mode of thought of the educated classes
which Herr Dühring has inherited, it must seem monstrous that in time to come
there will no longer be any professional porters or architects, and that the
man who for half an hour gives instructions as an architect will also act as a
porter for a period, until his activity as an architect is once again required.
A fine sort of socialism that would be—perpetuating professional porters!

If the equality of value of labour-time. means that each labourer produces
equal values in equal periods of time, without there being any need to take an
average, then this is obviously wrong. If we take two workers, even in the same
branch of industry, the value they produce in one hour of labour-time will
always vary with the intensity of their labour and their skill—and not
even an economic commune, at any rate not on our planet, can remedy this
evil—which, however, is only an evil for people like Dühring. What, then,
remains of the complete equality of value of any and every labour? Nothing but
the purely braggart phrase, which has no other economic foundation than Herr
Dühring's incapacity to distinguish between the determination of value by
labour and determination of value by wages—nothing but the ukase, the
basic law of the new economic commune: Equal wages for equal labour-time!
Indeed, the old French communist workers and Weitling had much better reasons
for the equality of wages which they advocated.

How then are we to solve the whole important question of the higher wages
paid for compound labour? In a society of private producers, private
individuals or their families pay the costs of training the qualified worker;
hence the higher price paid for qualified labour-power accrues first of all to
private individuals: the skilful slave is sold for a higher price, and the
skilful wage-earner is paid higher wages. In a socialistically organised
society, these costs are borne by society, and to it therefore belong the
fruits, the greater values produced by compound labour. The worker himself has
no claim to extra pay. And from this, incidentally, follows the moral that at
times there is a drawback to the popular demand of the workers for “the full
proceeds of labour”. [87]